Daily Archives: August 27, 2007

So much going on in the news today! Fredo resigns, Owen Wilson attempts suicide, Gucky writes a book (Certain to be a “Best-Selling” Tell-Nothing)

But, hold the phone, for now there’s THIS: a lengthy New York Magazine profile of The Eggman.

Well maybe it would be best to say sort-of profile. For its author, Philip Weiss, freely admits to not being able to get an interview of any sort (in person, by phone, or by e-mail) to the increasingly reclusive-to-the-point-of-paranoia Republican tool.

Clearly there’s a lot we know about the creep already, beginning with Jeanette Walls revelation that he likes to do it full-clothed in the shower, eating store-bought cake while having raw chicken embryos smashed over his head.

Still, even while Weiss feels he may be “stalking” Drudge, it’s not like Andrew Cunanan zeroing in on Gianni Versace (though that’s a scenario Drudge may indeed fear.) The important thing is Weiss writes a solid article, the most interesting segment of which is —

“This summer, Drudge choked up on his radio show reading a long passage from The Sheltering Sky. “How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, an afternoon that is so deeply a part of your being that you can’t even conceive of your life without it…” Its author, the late Paul Bowles, is someone Drudge would seem to emulate in his hatred of elites and complex sexuality.”

Now — to quote the immortal Daffy Duck — just a parboiled minute here!

One can scarcely call Bowles anti-elitest. After all, shortly after decamping to Tangier he established himself as the Pope of post-WWII bohemia — welcoming all and sundry from the Beats to Gavin Lambert and Tennessee Williams. In fact it was with the latter that he made a trip to Rome in 1953 in search of an errant Arab boytoy that Libby Holman had absconded with. There he and Tennessee were snapped up by the great Luchino Visconti to help with the script of his mid-period masterpiece Senso. You can scarecely find anything more elitist than that.

In regard to sexuality, as Gore Vidal mentions in Point to Point Navigation (with his usual breathtaking offhandedness) the reason Paul grabbed Jane and got the hell out of Dodge was that the NYC “Vice Squad” was looking for the rising young composer (soon to eclipse that career by becoming a noted author) for his afternoon dalliances with “impressionable” youths at certain notorious midtown Manhattan hotels.

Drudge has apparently been a lot more careful with boytoys (and foodstuffs) than Bowles. Though who knows what might pop up on the news any nanosecond now.

In any event it’s extremely odd to read of this uncharacteristic coup de foudre over The Sheltering Sky. Almost as odd as the fact that Robert Aldrich (of Kiss Me Deadly and Whatever Happened to Baby Jane fame) once longed to bring this tale of self-obliteration to the screen — the honor eventually falling to Bernardo Bertolucci in a quite striking film whose making Bowles fully cooperated with — only to diss on its release.

Just what does Drudge see of himself in Kit, Port and Tunner — Bowles trio of desperately searching Americans, adrift in the postwar Middle East?

And what happened to him that fateful afternoon that he finds comparable to Bowles?

Something Touche-esque perchance?

“Its a lazy afternoon
And the beetle bugs are zooming
And the tulip trees are blooming
And theres not another human in view,
But us two
Its a lazy afternoon
And the farmer leaves his reaping
And the meadow cows are sleeping
And the speckled trouts stop leaping up stream
As we dream
A fat pink cloud hangs over the hill
Unfolding like a rose
If you hold my hand and sit real still,
You can hear the grass as it grows
Its a hazy afternoon
And I know a place thats quiet, except for daisies running riot
And theres no one passing by it to see
Come spend this lazy afternoon with me”

Nah.

Scrub Kaye Ballard. Stock up on Entenmann’s and call in The Starland Vocal Band.

“Gonna find my baby, gonna hold him tight
gonna grab some afternoon delight.
My motto’s always been; when it’s right, it’s right.
Why wait until the middle of a cold dark night.
When everything’s a little clearer in the light of day.
And you know the night is always gonna be there any way.

Sky rockets in flight. Afternoon delight. Afternoon delight.

Thinkin’ of you’s workin’ up my appetite
looking forward to a little afternoon delight.
Rubbin’ sticks and stones together makes the sparks ingite
and the thought of rubbin’ you is getting so exciting.

Sky rockets in flight. Afternoon delight. Afternoon delight.

Started out this morning feeling so polite
I always though a fish could not be caught who wouldn’t bite
But you’ve got some bait a waitin’ and I think I might try nibbling
a little afternoon delight.

Sky rockets in flight. Afternoon delight. Afternoon delight.

Please be waiting for me baby when I come around.
We could make a lot of lovin’ ‘for the sun goes down.